@sferguson: It's a tough question to answer because the survey didn't delve into that level of detail with respondents. I imagine it depends on a wide range of factors--what state you work in, what the state tax profile is like (on top of federal), and how much your bonus is guaranteed each year. Some places promise bonuses and deliver them. Others promise bonuses but never deliver.

My general rule of thumb is to go for what is guaranteed, but that's just my level of risk tolerance at play.

What's your view on the benefits of bonsues versus maybe going for a higher base salary?

@Susan: Thanks for the clarity there. So, that leads me to ask do you think IT managers are thinking about or counting that bonus toward their overall salary. After all, if you receive say a $5,000 bonus, it's like getting an extra salary boost at some point during the year, even with the taxes, which would still affect a regular raise. Or do IT managers, as well as other workers, view the bonus as separate even through it's all taxed about the same as standard income?

@cafzall: I hope you're wrong and I fear you're right. The unfortunate reality is that what should be treated in logical economic terms -- the loss of a middle class in the U.S., a dearth of skilled wokers to perform the jobs that are avaialble, the taxes and other expenses of daily living -- become so mired in politics that it often seems there is no way out.

Here in the U.S., we have the one-two punch of big government passing laws that favor big corporations over individual citizens on all fronts.

Do you think IT in general is faring better or worse than other industry sectors?

@grcpro: Wow, you pretty much nailed today's working environment, and to add to what you've stated, I would say that there is too little interest placed on how this kind of pace and these expectations impact our cognitive functions.

A recent post in The New York Times, No Money, No Time, talksed about how time can be a more valuable resource than money. That particular article focused on how this impacts the working poor, though I think we can draw lessons from the research presented there for anyone in today's workplace as we're all asked to do more with less and operate on all cylinders all the time.

According to the blog's author:

Efficiency is always the more exhausting and demanding alternative. Attention is finite. For a while I may be more focused, but I can run on all cylinders for only so long. If I'm forced to operate under constraint all the time, my performance will suffer — and I may not even be capable of recognizing the deficit.

Does that pretty well describe what you see as the core problem in today's corporate environment?

@vnewman: Interesting you should mention that...when the InformationWeek Salary Survey asked respondents what matters most to them about their job, these three items ended up on the list of the top 10:

"My opinion and knowledge are valued" (No. 6)

"Job atmosphere" (No. 7)

"Recognition for work well done" (No. 9)

These are things that cost a company nothing at all, and go such a long way toward employee satisfaction.

Why do you think they're so hard to come by in today's corporate world?

@Susan I don't think true earning power will come back for quite some time. The double-whammy for workers is that with every improvement in the economy, we also see efficiency gains, which means that fewer workers are actually needed. That makes it doubly hard to climb back from the employment losses.

While you're definitely right about the poor, I really worry that the U.S. hasn't figured out that we're on the verge of becoming an industrialized country without a middle class. In many areas of the country, workers haven't ensured their skills have kept pace with today's needs and in areas where workers are doing better employment wise, taxes and related costs are outpacing earning gains by leaps and bounds.

Add all this up, along with the situations you describe about saving for retirement, education, etc. and it's truly worrying. We need to spend half as much time talking about our economic security as a country as we do security in a defense context, or maybe even an IT context.

I'm far from a "Tea Party guy," but we've got to do something about the increasing costs of government. To me, this isn't a political issue, but an economic one. Just as the math behind the housing boom didn't work in the long term, this math won't either. Our only realistic choice is to do something about it that will likely involve a combination of things. Sadly, though, we can't even talk to one another as a country on difficult issues right now, so who knows where it will end up?

@cfazall: Sad indeed, and quite accurate. In my own personal experience I can attest that is true, the past 15 years have been a series of peaks and valleys rather than the straight line that might be shown in the aggregate results, where we see base pay steadily climb. year on year base pay and cost-of-living increases have also done a twisty dance around one another, and when you factor in the need to save for retirement, support elderly parents or send kids to college, it certainly seems like there just isn't enough to go around.

Still, with every article I read about the plight of the working poor in the U.S. I have to remind myself how much worse it really could be.

What's your long-term view? Do you think we will ever return to a time when there is more demand and not enough workers? What will it take for earning power to be restored?

@yalanand: Inflation rates over the past 10 years have been somewhat capped in the U.S. by such factors as the Fed keeping interest rates low, and a variety of other economic fact. My knowledge of world economics is quite limited to what I read in the news media, though it is my understanding that the inflation rates are spiraling out of control in many many countries. So, while the InformationWeek Salary Survey polled only those in the U.S., our flash poll was open to all InformationWeek readers worldwide, and this could go a long way toward explaining the higher levels of salary dissatisfaction expressed in that poll.

Do you think such levels of salary dissatisfaction are particular to IT, or are all workers in countries with high inflations rates feeling equally dissatisfied?

What do you think the future holds for workers in such economic climates?

@sferguson: The salary survey does indeed include separate statistics on total compensation, which includes bonuses and other forms of cash compensation above and beyond base pay. I used the base pay figures for this particlar article because our flash poll only asked about salary.

However, according to the InformationWeek 2014 salary survey, 61% of IT staff and 70% of IT management expect to receive a bonus in 2014.

Median total cash compensation (including bonsues) for IT staff this year is $92,000 compared with $88,000 for base pay (excluding bonuses). For IT management it's $120,000 compared with $112,000 for base pay.

Based on this data, it looks like median bonuses are not huge in IT as they might be in other job functions (sales, for example), and as you rightly point out, in the U.S. bonuses are taxed at a much higher rate than base pay.

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